


Failure to Launch

by kittymills



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Galaxy Garrison, Garrison Sheith, Keith falls apart, M/M, Post-Kerberos Mission, Pre Kerberos, SHEITH - Freeform, Shiro the Hero, angry and sad keith, i kinda hate myself for writing this, keith mourning, pining shiro, sheith pining, shiro and keith relationship, shiro's last words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 07:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13026084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittymills/pseuds/kittymills
Summary: Keith throws himself into his training after Kerberos Mission leaves but then his world falls apart.At least Shiro left him something to remember him by.





	Failure to Launch

**Author's Note:**

> I struggled so much with this damn fic and rewrote it a million times before finally giving up. I hope I've done Shiro and Keith justice with this...

The days following the Kerberos launch felt like some of the longest Keith had ever endured - and that was saying a lot.

He threw himself into his training, working hard on taking on more and more challenging scenarios in the simulators and spending hours sparring in the gym until he was too tired to dream when he finally stumbled into bed.  Until he was too tired to think about Shiro… and how much he missed him.

And Keith did.  He missed Shiro more than he ever thought he could miss anyone. Especially the soft look in his eyes that made Keith feel like he was worth something to the universe. He even missed the sound of his voice, the encouragement he gave, the understanding and the reprimands that pulled Keith up short when he fell into a heated spiral.

Shiro steadied him and without him, Keith was aimless.

He wasn’t too proud to admit that he struggled with the more complex exercises.  He wasn’t good at chess and strategy and thinking five moves ahead.  That had always been Shiro’s strength.  Where he was able to nip at Shiro’s heels when it came to the flight simulation scores, Shiro left him for dust when it came to strategy.  It always left Keith stunned that through the red haze of his impulses, Shiro had calmly outmanoeuvred him without Keith even realising. He didn’t mind though.  Keith lived for that little self-satisfied smile that curved Shiro’s lips whenever Keith was left with his mouth gaping and failure leaving a red stain on his cheeks.

Weeks passed and Keith started to settle into a routine that didn’t revolve around searching through the message boards for any hint of updates on the mission.  Instead of trying to keep everything bottled up, he started a journal, addressing things to Shiro as though Shiro was in the room with him keeping counsel.  He thought Shiro would have been proud of him for that, he’d always encouraged Keith to talk it out with him rather than letting whatever issue it was to fester and eat him from the inside out.  Sometimes the entries would be long rambling pages of every thought and emotion Keith was trying to express, often going around in circles until he invariably found the solution himself.  Other times they were short, sharp and only a few words scratched angrily onto a page.

Then it all changed, and the road that Keith had been building for himself, to help him reach the stars, to reach Shiro, was gone.  It crumbed to dust under the weight of the words _Pilot Error_ and the boots of curious cadets who gossiped and speculated loudly in the hallways over what had gone wrong.

Now he sat at the desk in his small room, fingers clutching a pen so tightly his knuckles turned white. This… this was something he couldn’t begin to process.  He didn’t know where to start.  There was no thread to follow that would lead to a resolution, something to help him put aside this issue and move onto the next.  There was no resolution to this.  Not unless Keith threw himself into the stars and burned up diving into the sun.

They said Shiro was gone but Keith couldn’t believe it.  They said it was Shiro’s fault, and Keith wanted to throttle them all.  Shiro wouldn’t have made the mistakes they claimed.  Meticulous, calm, Shiro.  Keith knew this as much as he knew his own name.

The pen snapped in his hand.

\--

The Garrison eventually held a memorial for the crew of the Kerberos mission in the early hours of the morning before their final break for the year.  It had felt almost like an afterthought, the Garrison unwilling to draw too much attention to the shame of a failed mission and the loss of a talented crew once touted to be on the cutting edge of numerous discoveries. 

The students and trainers gathered outside in the courtyard under a banner that fluttered limply in the still barely-cool wind that rushed over the plains in the dawn.  There were no chairs and that alone told Keith that the memorial would be short and insincere and would in no way honour the crew the way they deserved.  Even as the sky turned from deep purple to a rich gold and pink, Keith fumed inwardly at the insult, tension rife within his lithe frame.

Iverson and the other instructors took turns to step up to a podium to speak as the various members of the crew were announced and remembered.  An older woman in the front row clutching her daughter to her chest sobbed loudly, her grief a visible echo of Keith’s own emotions.  When Shiro’s likeness flashed up, his official mission portrait that had him staring confidently into the camera lens, Keith had to clench his trembling fists and close his eyes against the image.

The memorial ended and the crowd dispersed just as the sun fully emerged from the horizon.  It became hot, sweat beginning to drip down the back of his neck in the heat but he lingered, staring up at the banner overhead.

It had been one hundred and twenty three days since the launch but Keith had stopped counting.

-

When the knock came, he had been sitting cross legged on the floor beside his beside his bunk.  In front of him, study notes were scattered about, dog eared pages opened to advanced texts years beyond his grade.  Those had belonged to Shiro, the older man leaving them with Keith for safe keeping while he was away. _“Don’t get too far ahead,”_ he’d joked as Keith flipped through the pages. “ _You’ll make the rest of the class look bad.”_   Keith had grinned in response and Shiro had chuckled in a way that sent a curl of pleasure right down to Keith's toes _.  “Who am I kidding, you’d do that anyway.”_

He’d finally glanced up when a second knock came.  He briefly considered ignoring until it until a muffled voice called his name through the door. He sighed and pushed away his books as he climbed to his feet.  When the door slid open, his breath caught in his throat and his heart stuttered. 

On the other side, the crisp grey uniform that hung from the senior cadet’s shoulders sent his mind barrelling back into memory – all those times it had been Shiro that stood there, waiting for Keith to get this act together and drag him to the simulators but then the senior cadet turned to face him and the hope that risen unbidden inside Keith turned to ash.

 _Idiot!_ He railed at himself in his mind. It was a cruel trick of the eyes and it made him sound harsher than he should when he finally spoke.

“What is it?” he snapped, belatedly tacking on a “Sir,” at the end with effort.  If the senior was bothered by that, he didn’t let it show. 

“Cadet Kogane, you need to come with me.”

\--

Keith didn’t recognise the other man in the suit standing in Iverson’s office.  He looked like some kind of civilian official with his dark suit and slicked back hair.  He carried a small case that he lifted onto the table as Keith stepped into the room.  Keith’s eyes flicked away, landing on his superior officer. 

“You summoned me, Sir?” Keith said dully, casting his eyes back to the floor.  He could feel Iverson appraising him and finding him lacking and it wouldn’t have been the first time.  He knew his uniform was crumpled and his hair dishevel but he couldn’t seem to find in him to care. It felt so unimportant when his world had been turned upside down.

“Kogane,” Iverson said gruffly. Keith could see the internal reprimand behind his eyes.  “This is Mr Hunter.  He has something for you.”

The man called Hunter cleared his throat.  “In the event that the mission might fail, each of the crew recorded a final message to be distributed to their loved ones.  Takashi Shirogane left his for you.”

It took a few moments for the words to sink in.  _Loved ones._

It took a few moments more to realise that Hunter was waiting for a response _._

“For me?” Keith’s voice cracked.

Hunter nodded.  “Yes. Strangely he only made one for you, no one else.”  He held it out towards Keith.

Keith stared at it, a multitude of emotions rolling through him. The package was a long silver rectangle box.  Embossed on the surface was the garrison logo and Shiro’s name.  The stranger held it out expectantly but Keith hesitated to take it.  Somehow doing so felt so final, that by taking it, it meant that he accepted the loss of the Kerberos mission, the loss of Shiro.  And he didn’t. Not for a second.

“Take it, son,” Iverson said, his usual gruffness put away for an attempt at gentleness.  He couldn’t have known what Shiro and Keith meant to each other, distanced as he was from the very day going-ons of the garrison and the students.  He wouldn’t have approved if he had.  But Shiro was gone, and there was no potential of a looming scandal to concern himself with.  He could afford to be generous.

On any other day, the endearment would have made Keith bristle but today it washed over him and skittered away with barely any notice.  He was focused only on the silver box. He reached for it slowly and it was cool against his fingers.

This was all he had left, all he would have of Shiro.  The implication of Shiro leaving it for him wouldn’t sink in until later.

“Keep it safe,” the official said as Keith curled his trembling fingers around it. 

Keith pulled it close to his chest as his eyes threatened to prick with tears and his heartbeat ramped up.  He didn’t wait to be dismissed, spinning on his heel and barrelling through the mass of students in the hallway outside of Iverson’s office.  He connected roughly with a brown-haired boy, ignoring the heated yell of _watch it, mullet!_ that echoed after him.  He kept going until the doorway to his room loomed up ahead and he broke into a sprint, shoving it open when he finally reached it and slamming it shut behind him.

He slunk down to the floor, back against the sealed door and clutching the box tightly in his hands.  He turned it over, running his fingers over the embossed emblem, over the letters of Shiro’s name.  Shiro had held his box, Shiro had been thinking of him when he sealed it. 

_Shiro. Shiro. Shiro._

Keith had endured a lot of things in his short life.  Abandoned, ostracised, distrusted.  But this…. This hurt so much he could barely breathe.  He felt Shiro’s absence like a hole in his heart.  It leeched away all the colour in his world.  Everything was dull and empty and devoid of life just like the space between the stars. 

Once he opened this box, then Shiro would really be gone.  There would be nothing else, the last data packet from the mission received weeks ago. The message then from Shiro had been brief, professional, privy to everyone who had been connected to the mission but Keith could read how much Shiro missed him in his eyes as he gazed into the camera, the way his eye brows lifted slightly and bunched a little in the middle.  It had made Keith smile even as he felt Shiro’s absence so keenly he couldn’t bring himself to eat for almost two days.  Only a few more months, he’d told himself. 

How wrong he’d been.

He lost track of the hours he sat there, the box on the floor in front of him, daring him.  He imagined Shiro sitting crossed legged on the older side, one eyebrow lifted and his lips in a slight smile.

“It won’t bite you know,” imaginary Shiro said with a softness he reserved only for Keith. 

Keith gulped and his hand curled into a fist.  He thumped his chest hard, just once, desperate to find a way to ease the pain, to soothe the aching inside his ribcage that was eating him from the inside out.  The pain left him breathless.

“I don’t want to say goodbye. Not yet,” he finally choked out.  Imaginary Shiro looked sad.

“Well, when you’re ready then,” he said, and the response was so inherently Shiro that Keith wanted to bawl all over again. 

Keith pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms around them and laying his head down.  It hurt, but at least the hurt was real.  It made him think of Shiro every day, made him remember him.  Already the garrison talk had moved onto the next thing.  Keith wasn’t sure what was worse, the whispered speculations on what ‘pilot error’ really meant, or the ease and disregard of how quickly everyone moved on.  The mission was eventually regulated to a cautionary tale, and Keith wanted to scream. 

He lost track of the hours that passed.  He must have dozed at some point, he woke at the disorientating touch of a ghostly weight resting on his shoulder.  It reminded him of the last time he saw Shiro, the way Shiro had held himself back, a kind of regret in his eyes even as the excitement shone.  He was so bright and strong and Keith had wanted to kiss him, but Shiro’s voice had replayed in the back of his mind.

_‘It could be years until we see each other again, you’ll graduate and have missions of your own, and… and I won’t hold you to anything.”_

Keith had wanted to yell at him. _I’ll wait! I’ll wait forever!_

But in the meantime, he simply worked hard, pushing for advances in the program to help him reach for the stars faster than any other cadet in Galaxy Garrison history.  If he could reach the stars… then maybe, he could reach Shiro.

Finally, he picked up the box, stealing himself as he gently swiped his finger over the lock.  It beeped softly and a small screen appeared requesting a code.  For a moment, Keith stared at it before tapping in the date of the first time they met.  There was a quiet whir and the lock disengaged and Keith had to smile to himself in spite of the pain.  Just another small way that Shiro told him how much he cared without using words.

Inside the box was a pristine white envelope but it was the sight of his name in a familiar handwriting that caused his heart to lurch.  Shiro’s handwriting. 

With shaking hands, he turned the envelope over and ran a trembling finger under the seal.  The pages he pulled out made him sob out loud, the sight of Shiro’s script making him tremble and his eyes fill.  He started to rush then, unfurling the paper to drink in the words Shiro had left him. 

He unfolded the paper, dimly noting the garrison logo on one corner and Shiro’s words filling the page.  He sucked in a deep breath to steel himself, then began to read.

 

> _Keith,_
> 
> _If you’re reading this, then it means the mission failed and I broke my promise. And if that’s the case then… I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry._
> 
> _They’re readying the shuttle for launch now, doing the final checks before we board.  They told us to write this before we left but it’s taken me until now to be able to put down what I wanted to say.  I keep thinking about our last night, sitting on the roof of the barracks in the dark and watching the stars.  Those are some of my treasured memories and you can be sure that when the shuttle takes off and reaches space, I’ll be looking at those stars and still thinking of you._
> 
> _Keith, I know you were hurt by what I said… by not wanting you to wait for me.  But you deserve the better.  You deserve to reach the stars, to share your incredible talent with the galaxy. I have no doubt that you will take us where we have never been before and I won’t be the one to hold you back._
> 
> _If my life ends on this mission, there is one regret I have, and I had planned on rectifying it when we get back – I wish I had kissed you.  I wish I had the chance to hold your face and draw my lips over yours and take the taste of you into the starlight with me._
> 
> _It’s selfish of me to tell you this now, this is more for my own conscience than yours. I only hope that you never have to see these words and that one day, in the distant future, I may have the chance to tell you this face to face._
> 
> _I love you, Keith. I’m sorry I’ll never get the chance to tell you that but I know you’ll survive regardless. You’re a survivor and it was an honour to have been your friend._
> 
> _Take care, Keith.  Go chase that starlight, you were born for it._
> 
> _Shiro._

 

The sob that tumbled out of Keith’s chest didn’t sound human. It was harsh and guttural, like the death throes of a huge beast that had taken too long to die.  His hands shook as his eyes filled and his fingers clenched, crushing the precious paper that held Shiro’s last words to him and Keith had the dizzying sensation that he was standing on the precipice of his entire life changing.  And it was.  He could see the path laid out for him shift and change.  Shiro was gone, and so was his focus.  What point was there to reaching for the stars if Shiro wasn’t there to catch him? 

\--

It took weeks for Keith to unravel completely.  His scores started to drop, his attendance faltered.  Some mornings he lay in his bunk staring as the numbers ticked over and the day dragged on without him.  At night he couldn’t sleep, often stealing away to the garrison rooftop he had whiled away so many hours with Shiro just staring up at the constellations that dotted the heavens.  At first he imagined Shiro beside him, but as the weeks went on, even imaginary Shiro started to fade. With each day that passed, Keith knew he would be disappointing Shiro.  His mind shied away from the thought of Shiro knowing how badly he was failing.

When Iverson gave him his final warning, he was almost relieved.  It had hurt too much to walk down the same corridors that he had walked with Shiro, the same mess hall they had sat and talked for hours, the same books opened between them, debating over strategy.  The same seat in the simulator that Shiro had laid down countless hours training for the mission that would take him away from Keith, not just for the year, but forever.  Keith couldn’t live with the ghost anymore and the insistent draw he’d always had to the desert grew stronger and stronger.

Then he was officially expelled from the Garrison, his life in tatters and no hope of reaching the stars, not that he even had any desire to anymore.  He found his way back into the desert, alone and waiting impatiently for something he couldn’t understand.

And searching for things that bordered on the impossible.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk sheith to me at flashedarrow.tumblr.com


End file.
